What do you perceive is harder? Being a Player or a GM?

[gbaji]

One of the things to keep in mind is that there are a TON of different roleplaying styles and campaign designs, and these often have so little to do with each other it doesn't make sense to talk about them at the same time despite it all being "roleplaying". A kick-in-the-door dungeon crawl hack-and-slash is a radically different experience to play and run than a political intrigue game. In the former, the GM is placing room geometry and monsters, in the latter they are dealing with motivations, methods, and emotions. These are just unrelated games.

Sure. But in both cases, the GM has to play all of the NPCs, while the players just have to play the one character in front of them. From a workload perspective, the GM has a lot more to do. And intrigue games? Super hard from the GM perspective. Sure, there's a bit of a dichotomy because you could say that the GM already "knows the plots/intrigue", and the players have to figure stuff out. But the GM has to keep all of that stuff straight, know exactly which NPCs knows what, what each NPCs motivations and goals are, and then keep track of every conversation between every PC and NPC so as to maintain the "who knows what" dynamic. It's one of the hardest things to do in a game environment. One mistake, or slipped bit of dialogue by the GM can absolutely ruin such games.

Another big difference between multiple GM/player types is how much is predetermined. Does the GM know what is on the other side of that hill, or do they just have a vague sense of the region and will make up whatever you encounter? Did they make a puzzle with a solution, or did they just narrate problems and assume the players will come up with something? On the player side, does Steve know his paladin's development arc, does he have a plan for his foibles causing conflict and sparking growth, or is he just moving a pile of stats around on the table? These are very different styles which each involve different skillsets, and how hard or easy it will be is much more dependent on how skilled the person is at playing their role than what role they are playing.

I think that a huge aspect of this is responsibility though. The GM is responsible for creating and running a game that is fun for everyone at the table. The player is only really responsible for their own character and actions (and sure, not "ruining fun" for the table). I guess I'll also point out that player expecations scale with player skill. That means that playing a character is only as "hard" as you make it yourself. You can choose to just move stats around on the sheet, if that's what you want (or have the skill go do). And you can certainly be far more proactive as a player, developing and playing out complelx character traits and arcs. But that's up to the player to choose to do, it's only as "hard" as the player chooses to make it.

On the flip side, player expections of GMs is much much higher than GM expecations of players. Sure, I love it when players do more with their characters, but I've never kicked a player out of a game because they just showed up and made mechanical decisions for their character based on skills/abilities/spells/items on their sheet in response to the situation in front of them. The only things that gets a player booted/dropped is the same thing that will cause players to flee a GMs table (offensive/disruptive play). But players will absolutely leave a game if the GM just phones it in though. No one really wants to play a game run by a GM who just asks the players "Ok. Which direction do you go?" and then rolls random charts for encounters, runs them, hands out treasure, and then repeats over and over.

So yeah. There's a much greater expectation placed on the GM than on the players IMO.

The GM is just a player with a much more abstract character, and the player is just a GM with much more indirect influence. Typically, it is the players who determine the course of a game, and the GM merely plays as its foil. But there is an ebb and flow in all things, and the balance of power shifts back and forth.

Yes. A good RPG is more or less cooperative storytelling, and players ideally should be very much involved in their part of the story. But each player is still only telling one small part of that story. The GM still has a much larger responsibility for the whole. The GM creates the setting, and the story, and writes the outline. The players just fill in the details. And yes, really good players may also help inspire the GM when drawing the outline as well (storyarc and plot ideas/requests). But a good GM can still produce a great story in the absence of large amounts of player input and contribution. The opposite just doesn't work nearly as well.

It's about what you're good at and how you choose to run/play.

Yeah. Again though, I come back to player skill/effort being "nice to have", while GM skill/effort is "required" (for a good result anyway). And yeah, a couple people have commented on players steping up and filling in the gaps. But that's not really about the player "role" being harder, but that the player is taking on some of the GM role for a less experienced or skilled GM who may be overwhelmed a bit by the game. That's still about the GM's "job" being harder.

I suppose this depends on how strictly we're dividing up the roles and duties here. And yes, some tables will have more of what I consider the "GM role" being handled by the players. But if we divide this up based on "content creation" versus "content consumption", the former is much more work than the latter IMO.


I suppose we could also tangent off to another question though: Which is more "fun/rewarding"? That's a waaaay tricker one IMO.